Chapter 975 - 971: A Grand Wedding
The gathered crowd of onlookers was abuzz with discussions.
Bai Qingyan watched the people chatting and laughing, wiping the sweat from their faces with handkerchiefs.
Today at the Imperial College, those students also asked Bai Qingyan the same question: why encourage widows to remarry?
To those students, Bai Qingyan explained clearly that for hundreds of years, nations have fought over land and population. More people mean more productivity, and with productivity, the nation can be prosperous and strong.
Bai Qingyan only needed to briefly point this out for the students to immediately understand that encouraging widows to remarry was ultimately to increase the population, with the aim of strengthening the nation and preparing for unifying the world.
But while these students could understand, it wasn’t certain the common folk could grasp it.
"No one is forcing me to remarry! It’s my own wish to remarry! I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone!" The young woman who had nearly drowned herself had changed into dry clothes, but her hair was still wet. Despite hearing her mother-in-law shout that the new law forced widows to remarry, she couldn’t hold back and stepped out of the carriage.
The young woman stood at the front of the carriage, disheveled, fearing that such commotion might make Bai Qingyan feel that implementing this new law would be difficult and might change it to forbid widows from remarrying. That would leave more women like herself trapped in a cage, unable to escape!
Thus, she was willing to stand up.
The young woman stepped down from the carriage, swiftly came forward, and knelt before Bai Qingyan, tears streaming down: "Your Majesty, no one knows how hard the life of a widow is, with the husband gone and the child lost! I don’t want to live like this forever— I still want to have my own children! I still want to be a mother! I can’t just waste away my life in the Bai family! So when the new law encouraged widows to remarry, I sincerely wanted to bow and thank Your Majesty!"